藤シローの複眼ウォッチング

五番街キューブの知られざる物語

“The point of the meeting,” Shannon recalled, “was that Steve wanted to show Harry what his vision was for that site. We got there and they had this beautiful wood model of the building and plaza, and there’s this 40‐by‐40‐foot glass cube in the middle of the plaza. And Harry knew immediately that that was the right answer. Our original ideas had the glass pavilion closer to the street, because the zon­ing laws required a street wall for that site. And the Apple team put it right in the middle, more like the Louvre…

Macklowe knew that the only major flaw in Jobs’s concept was the size. Forty feet was too big — not just for zoning restrictions but for the scale of the building. No one would like it — not the city, not the tenants. He also knew that talking about it with Jobs wouldn’t get him anywhere. He’d have to show Apple what he meant. He invited Apple’s retail development executives, Ron Johnson and Robert “Rob” Briger, to the building two weeks after the Cupertino meeting, to view a scaffolding mock‐up of the cube — in the dead of night. (Regulations forbade Macklowe to build during the day.)

Around two in the morning, the group met in front of the GM Building. The 40‐foot cube was unveiled. They all agreed it was too big. It obscured the building. Macklowe was grinning. He then gave the signal, and the model was dismantled — only to reveal a 30‐foot cube he had secretly constructed underneath.

I still remember meeting Steve Jobs in New York on Fifth Avenue in 1999 after a Macworld Expo. He and his lovely wife were just standing on the street looking across it and talking. I walked up and introduced myself and we chatted for a few minutes.

It wasn’t until years later I realized they had been standing opposite what would eventually become the Fifth Ave Cube and Jobs was scouting the location.